Judges

A judge has signed off on a $98 million settlement in two franchisee class actions against 7-Eleven, but has yet to reach a decision on $19.6 million in legal costs and a $25 million funding commission, which a court-appointed contradictor has urged him to reject.

Collapsed supply chain finance company Greensill Capital has been accused of fraudulently obtaining policies from its largest insurer, Japan-based Tokio Marine, which has been dragged into four lawsuits over a trade credit policy issued in 2019.

An additional 1,200 women who were implanted with defective pelvic mesh devices will be eligible for compensation after Johnson & Johnson unit Ethicon agreed that findings in an earlier class action which it unsuccessfully fought all the way to the High Court should apply to a follow-on class action.

The structural engineer behind Sydney's Opal Tower plans to drag insurer Tokio Marine into a lawsuit against two of Icon's insurers, after discovering another $50 million policy that responds to claims in a class action brought by apartment owners.

ASIC did not issue threats to a Sydney security company that was being investigated for links to outlaw bike gangs and defrauding the Commonwealth, according to a judge who found the corporate regulator legally terminated its contracts with the company.

Westpac has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle proceedings brought by ASIC for misleading 141 customers into believing they had purchased add-on insurance.

Colonial First State will pay $56.3 million to settle a class action that accused the wealth management group of delaying the transfer of $3.2 billion in customer funds to low cost MySuper accounts.

Two heavyweight plaintiff firms battled it out Friday to run a shareholder class action against Beach Energy, with Shine Lawyers saying it should be rewarded for setting the price of the contingency fees sought in the case and Slater & Gordon arguing it has a better track record in class actions.

A case before the Full Court that will revisit the question of whether class actions are managed investment schemes may not resolve all of the funding controversies that have emerged in a class action against franchise giant Retail Food Group, a court has heard.

Sydney law firm Atanaskovic Hartnell has been ordered to pay more than $160,000 to a former general manager who was found by a court to have been the victim of a "campaign of denigration" by one of the firm's founders.